Updated 2 November 2026
Want your Discord bot online day and night? Then you need a computer that never turns off. Many people think of a Raspberry Pi at home. That works well, but it isn't free and it takes some care. Here's an honest comparison with bot hosting.
What a Raspberry Pi costs
- Buying it: a Raspberry Pi 5 with a power supply, case and memory card costs roughly €90 to €130, depending on the model and where you buy it.
- Electricity: a Pi uses only a few watts. At about 4 watts, all year round, that's roughly 35 kWh, around €10 a year at current Dutch prices.
- Your time: installing the system, updates, and fixing it when something stops working.
Discord bot hosting at ServerSpark costs €0.69 a month (€2.07 per quarter) for a 512 MB bot. Over three years that's about €25, versus roughly €120 to €160 for a Pi including electricity.
Side by side
| Raspberry Pi at home | Bot hosting | |
|---|---|---|
| Upfront cost | About €90 to €130 | None |
| Monthly cost | Electricity, around €1 | €0.69 |
| Online when your power or internet is down? | No | Yes, in a data centre |
| Updates and security | You do it | We keep the platform up to date |
| Restart after a crash | Set it up yourself | Automatic |
| Learning Linux | Great way to learn | Less to learn, more time for your bot |
| Other projects on the same device | Yes | No, one bot per plan |
When a Raspberry Pi is the better choice
- You want to learn Linux and networking, and tinkering is part of the fun.
- You run several projects on it, like a home automation hub or a media server.
- It's fine if the bot is sometimes offline for a while.
When bot hosting is the better choice
- Your bot should simply stay online, also during a power cut or when your router restarts.
- You'd rather spend time on your bot's features than on keeping a computer running.
- You don't want to buy hardware upfront, and you want to stop any month.
Want even more control, or to run several bots and tools? A VPS gives you a whole Linux server of your own. See our VPS plans.
Moving your bot from a Pi
Moving is quick: upload your code under Files in SparkPanel, put your token in a .env file and press Start. Packages from package.json or requirements.txt are installed automatically. Step by step: Run your Discord bot 24/7. Comparing free hosts too? Read Free vs paid Discord bot hosting.